Even the CEO of an AI-focused firm can see the appeal of in-person work—some of the time.
Sarah Franklin, who joined people-management platform Lattice in January after 15 years at Salesforce, is leading the company forward with a fully flexible approach. (Her arrival came two years after the company closed its Series F funding round, which tripled its valuation to $3 billion.)
That flexible work is the only way forward is not just Franklin’s personal opinion; it’s crucial for the success of her company. Some estimates suggest Lattice stands to reach a $48 billion valuation by 2028—sixteen-fold growth—thanks to the rampant spread of digitization and distributed work.
Every company, regardless of where it stands, or how committed it is to the older ways of collaboration and hiring, has “an opportunity right now to invest in the systems that allow for creating talent density, purposefully, in the places that you want,” Franklin told Fortune.
For the most part, that means nixing office mandates, which Franklin, like many future-oriented CEOs, supports because of the well-trodden evidence that it works for everyone. “The data is pretty clear that mandates don’t increase productivity; the focus for us at Lattice is carrot, not stick,” she says. The firm is hybrid, as she believes almost all firms will be in the future.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Franklin’s take somewhat mirrors that of her former boss and longtime mentor, Marc Benioff. The magnanimous chief of the $260 billion SaaS firm has long maintained that some amount of flexibility—and allowing employee choice to dictate policies—has separated him from many of his bullish pro-office counterparts.
“I’m a remote worker. I’ve always been a remote worker my whole life. I don’t work well in an office,” Benioff said in September. “It just doesn’t work for my personality. I can’t tell you why. I do love to go in to visit customers, though. I’m on the road constantly visiting customers.”
Benioff wants to ensure his workers don’t feel “forced,” he said, because that will lead to churn, and “we don’t want to lose our stars.” Even so, the company does require a handful of days in-person, because even Benioff can admit fully remote workers who don’t receive adequate on-the-job training can end up falling behind. (To be sure, Salesforce workers have mixed feelings themselves. As a bargaining chip, the company at one point began offering $10 charity donations for each day of in-person work an employee does.)
Even so, where Benioff and Franklin align is in the sentiment that productivity, not control, is what works. “The focus is on effectiveness, and how well we’re running as a business,” Franklin said of Lattice’s distributed-work plan. “There’s no one size fits all. We’ve implemented hybrid with great success because it lets people choose when to come in, and we see the gravity of that.” She also said she sees the gravity of how useful and substantive in-office days are when they aren’t superfluous.
“The focus is not on collecting badge scans; it’s on evaluating and incentivizing performance and helping people do great jobs in their careers,” she says. “I’ll share an anecdote: We’ve seen firsthand data showing a dramatic dip, across the board, with regard to employee engagement. I deeply believe that many of the stick tactics of these mandates strip people of their sense of being an adult, at a job, wanting to do the work.”
Franklin urges executives not to be hall monitors. “Focus on how you drive engagement—not by giving a bunch of perks that don’t make sense,” she says. Instead, zero in on opportunities for skilling, teaching, and providing novel career pathways. “It’s about employee success, not what snacks are in the breakroom,” she says. “Ask people if they feel proactive and empowered to do great work.”
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